September 7, 2011
Mayor questions
county "results"
by Vance Gutzman
A lot of sound and fury, signifying what?
While there is hardly anything Shakespearean about Renfrew County
council at the best of times, that was the question Deep River Mayor
David Thompson posed to his fellow mayors and reeves when the group met
for their August meeting last week.
Thompson was referring to the economic development performance
indicators which were part and parcel of the county's development and
property committee report.
The performance indicators Thompson was referencing are broken down
into three categories (activities, outputs and results) of the county's
economic development department.
Thompson's main concern focused on the "outputs" - which reflected the
fact that, for the first seven months of this year, up to the end of
August, the economic development department generated 1,424 "general
email activities" and 847 "general telephone activities."
"You had a lot in terms of outputs," Thompson told county council.
"But when you get to the results, they don't seem to be there."
That comment was made in relation to the, well, "results" of the
"activities" and the results showed that as a result of all the
department's activities, there was just one new company which set up
shop in the county as a result of external inquiries.
There was also one local expansion noted in the results, one local
diversification and seven full-time jobs created.
Total new investment in the county for the first seven months of the
year totalled $350,000, with 20,000 square feet of industrial space
created and a further 252,000 square feet (of either industrial or
commercial/ institutional - the report does not specify) being
investigated.
The economic development department was also able to secure $25,000 for
businesses and $30,000 for municipalities in Renfrew County.
Thompson found those results to be lacking.
"How do we assure the taxpayers that they're getting value for their
money, when the results don't seem to be there?" Thompson asked.
The county's property and development director, Paul Moreau, in
responding to the mayor, assured him that his department is taking
steps to try and extrapolate its efforts into positive results.
"It is a challenge and we're open to any advice," Moreau said.
"Sometimes it's very difficult to quantify our efforts in terms of jobs
on the ground."
Thompson's concerns were also taken up by Killaloe, Hagarty and
Richards Mayor Janice Visneskie, who said she had been plugging for the
county to develop an economic development website when she served as
county warden from 2007-08.
"I certainly kept asking, but it never came to be," Visneskie said.
"We need to let people know where we are."
The county's chief administrative officer, Jim Hutton, assured
Visneskie that a great deal of work had been done on developing an
economic development website under the tutelage of former economic
development manager Mitch Wilkie, but that the project fell by the
wayside to some extent when Wilkie left the county's employ to take a
job with the provincial government.
"It's still very much on our radar," Hutton said.
Renfrew County Warden Bob Sweet also waded into the issue.
"It's not always about bricks and mortar, but Mayor Thompson is right,"
Sweet said.
"We'd like to see these numbers grow."
|
